[pantodragon (OP)]

Last night I dreamed that I was using a portal to rise from ground level to some sort of floating city.  The portal failed but I managed to escape unscathed.  However, the other users of the portal were not so lucky.  I found these people floating in limbo with their heads detached from their bodies.
This dream illustrates the state of people who use logic exclusively i.e. without reference to the senses, to personal experience and intuition etc.  The idea of being in a floating city is that logic is not grounded in personal experience or anything else, but is free floating.  The idea that the head is detached from the body illustrates the “heartlessness”  of logic and reason.
These people caught in limbo are the people I have been encountering on the forums, scientists and philosophers and others who depend on pure reason.  The idea of a portal denotes that  the “natural mind” is in a different state from the mind that uses only logic, and that a transition from one state to the other involves a disjointed change in the state of mind.
I was able to use the portal successfully, because I have developed intuition etc.  So, for example, when I do a bout of thinking i.e. of pure reason, after about an hour, I begin to feel spaced out.  I experience this state as extremely unpleasant and I know I have to recover from it.  I also know that if I allow myself time doing something different, my mind will come down to ground level again.
Several years ago, I had a dream in which I was free floating in space, again associated with very unpleasant sensations.  This dream served to remind me of the state I was in before I developed and practiced the full use of my senses, sensations, feelings and intuition.  At the time i.e. when I was spaced out, I had no sense of what state my mind was in.  It was only after I became grounded etc., that I could look back and be aware of how ghastly and frightening that state of mind had been.

PS: The opening question was: are you spaced out and headless?  From the subsequent post, it should be clear that scientists qualify.

[Minerva]

I thought you were just misguided and now I realise you are trolling.

I wont bother to read/answer your posts any more.

[evan_au]

Many applied scientists and engineers also feel "spaced out" if they try to use reason exclusively.

Scientists need senses to see and feel what is happening in the world (and beyond it); experience to explore and remember a wide range of events; and intuition to recognise patterns and propose theories.

Where applied scientists and engineers diverge from the bulk of theoretical scientists, philosophers, poets and dreamers is that applied scientists set out to test those theories, and ask others to help.

[bizerl]

Everybody uses the scientific to make up their mind about what to believe and how to act etc.

Whether you are a theoretical physicist or a catholic priest, you have come to your own conclusions about life based on the evidence that has been fed to you from your senses. For someone that believes in creationism, for example, they have weighed all the evidence gathered in their life so far and come to the conclusion that the best model that accounts for all that evidence is that God created the world several thousand years ago.

What science does is try to establish not only what is most likely based on an individual's personal experience, but what is true for everyone, independent of personal experience. Scientists use all the evidence they themselves have gathered and all the evidence that other scientists have gathered and try to come up with models that fit all the known data.

An individual scientist still processes all the known data through their own senses and their own brain, and may come up with a different conclusion based on different life experiences. This is why scientists often disagree, and is an important part of moving towards a more complete (for want of a better term) truth.

I don't think anyone believes anything that disagrees with the evidence presented to them through their senses.

After reading a few of your posts pantodragon, I am left wondering what it is you hope to get out of this science q and a forum?

[pantodragon (OP)]

I thought you were just misguided and now I realise you are trolling.

I wont bother to read/answer your posts any more.

I think you've just realised that you're wrong and I'm right, and you've no arguments left so you've fallen back on the last resort of poor loser: names calling.  (Maybe you should rethink your avatar.  What on earth induced you to go for that one in the first place?  A little modesty becomes most people - pantodragon is actually short for pantomime dragon - no arrogance there then.)